On Saturday night, Leafs NCAA free agent signings Luke Haymes (#62) and John Prokop (#37) made their AHL debuts with the Toronto Marlies. For the sake of full transparency, it’s final exam season for me here, so I did miss the entirety of the first period wrapping up my assignments and studying.
I did watch the rest of the game, however, so today we’ll cover the two highly touted signings and how they did in their first-ever pro game (at least two-thirds of it).
Haymes played this game centring the fourth line alongside Baddock and Pare while Prokop lined up on the bottom pairing alongside Tommy Miller. It makes sense, the adjustment from the NCAA to the AHL is a tough one (as we saw with Jacob Quillan), so I expected the coaching staff the ease the two of them in.
Prokop’s expectations in terms of adjusting will likely be higher, he’s three years older than Haymes, even if both have the physical tools at their respective positions to make it easier to translate. How did these two fare? Well, let’s get into the article to answer those questions.
Luke Haymes
Haymes did a nice job staying alert as the centreman in the slot. It looked like he was making it a point to constantly be scanning to make sure he was covering who he was supposed to. Nice shot block when he and Prokop got caught out for a long shift defensively in the second period, but he could’ve done better on a few chances to get the puck deeper for a change.
He’s in the right spots and he’s winning puck battles in both the offensive and defensive zone. I’ve yet to see the intense motor, but he almost had a nice keep at the offensive blue-line, dangling through the skates of a Sens player, but he got his feet tangled up with his teammate. He’s getting in the mix, and he had a nice drive to the net with less than a minute to go in the second period off a Rifai pass that was foiled by the right pad of Meralainen.
Overall, Haymes’ skating has looked good, smooth and fluid, and he doesn’t look like he’s struggling to keep up the pace. Outside of an epic wipe-out on the forecheck in the corner, the prized NCAA free agent was pretty pedestrian after I watched him for two whole periods. It’s not good or bad, but I think it was encouraging to see him play some pretty mistake-free hockey in his pro debut.
John Prokop
Prokop impressed me tonight. Early in the second, he lost a puck battle but stuck with it and battled to clear the net front on a point shot. He got stuck defending a 2-on-1 as Miller turned the puck over, very good job of hedging and then taking the pass away completely by sliding. Just very nice rush defending in general from Prokop throughout the second period with an active leading stick and tight gap control. He and Haymes got stuck in the zone for some sustained Belleville offensive zone time, but competed hard and didn’t allow a goal against.
Prokop showed some nice skating at the line under pressure to keep the puck and continue the offensive zone pressure when the Marlies were able to get some sustained offensive zone time. He showed a few nice activations and passes on that shift as well before sitting down a Belleville player trying to drive the net seconds later defensively.
I’ve liked Prokop tonight a lot, very calm with the puck, and he looks to be adjusting to AHL speed just fine. He wasn’t beat badly, a pretty safe playstyle for the most part for him.
He had some great shoulder checks, which I think is a very good sign as it was one of my concerns coming into this game. He got some reps on PP2 as well, where he was fine, and he had a nice keep on a Sens clear attempt. Later on that power play, he got back defensively after his teammate turned it over on an entry to shut down Reinhardt and then again a few seconds later when it looked like Jan Jenik might get a partial break, forcing him to the outside and onto his backhand.
He had a super active stick to poke the puck away with seven minutes left in the third period, disrupting two entry attempts by Belleville. It was almost a perfect game for Prokop, who looked calm and collected all game long on exits and entries while winning puck battles and disrupting entries and rush attempts.
Other NCAA Alumni
Jacob Quillan
Quillan was lit up by Hayden Hodgson in the second period, but outside of that, he looked very good tonight, arguably Toronto’s best forward. Nylander–Quillan–Hirvonen was dangerous all night for the Marlies. Quillan was on the second power play unit, where he was involved on the tying goal, and he was flying out there on the forecheck. Confident and powerful on the puck, and consistently driving the net without it. He looks like he’s playing with a ton of confidence right now, and if this is how he plays next season, I wouldn’t be shocked if he steals a roster spot early on with the Leafs.
Cade Webber
Webber looked… okay. He’s the weirdest skater I’ve ever seen because his big strides somehow make him almost look majestic going forward, but I’ve never seen someone look so awkward turning or skating backwards. On the penalty kill in the third period, a Senator dumped the puck in, and Webber looked like he was stumbling to turn around at the blue line to go retrieve it. He lost the foot chase to the puck as a result and then was in scramble mode to recover when the forward cut back. His reach and willingness to clear the net front with cross-checks is nice but I’m failing to see a full-time NHL player here. Prokop looked far more impressive to me tonight despite it being his first-ever AHL game.
Ryan Kirwan signs
Friedman announced that the Leafs were interested in Ryan Kirwan out of Arizona State University, and just minutes after the game ended, it was confirmed the Marlies were inking the 23-year-old to a two-year deal starting next season.
I caught a few snippets of Kirwan while watching Cullen Potter earlier this year, although I wasn’t really paying attention to him (I didn’t realize he was going to be an NCAA free agent). I’ll have to find some more focused shift-by-shift tape for Kirwan after my final exams are done, but from what I remember, he’s a classic Leafs NCAA signing. Big, strong, is a magnet for contact, shoots it very well and plays in straight lines. He’s not a centre, but this 6’2”, 206 lbs monster is still a very nice depth add to a system that lost Nikita Grebenkin.
New Strategy?
As I touched on earlier in my Prokop article, Toronto’s market appeal and unique circumstance of desperately needing young, cheap talent with short NHL ETA’s make the NCAA free agent market a perfect match for their needs. It looks like Toronto knows it has the resources to recruit and bring these high-end NCAA players into the fold, and I expect that to continue to be a strategy they use over the next few years as the team struggles with a severe lack of draft capital.
With how Quillan has developed this season with the Marlies, Bobby McMann’s impact alongside Tavares and Nylander on the Leafs, and Alex Steeves cementing himself as arguably the greatest Toronto Marlie of all time, Prokop and Haymes’ solid AHL debuts give this front office more reason than ever to continue to invest in that avenue of talent accumulation.
